


this year i devour

by Augment



Series: without guilt [2]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Happy Ending, M/M, Pining, Resolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:26:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24125113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Augment/pseuds/Augment
Summary: Luffy turns, to see Zoro caught up in the sight of him, and grins. The sun haloes him perfectly, bright noon-day glare, and Zoro is temporarily blinded. When his vision clears, Luffy is still smiling, sharing the joy of his first ship with his first crewmate, and it feels like liquid sunlight's been injected into Zoro's veins, lighting his blood on fire and burning it up, burning him dry.
Relationships: Monkey D. Luffy/Roronoa Zoro
Series: without guilt [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1740724
Comments: 54
Kudos: 388





	this year i devour

**Author's Note:**

> Companion to [last year i abstained](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21102149), from Zoro’s perspective.
> 
> This mess is my own fault, because I chose a title and metaphor that demanded to be matched, but also please accept a very big thank you to the lovely commenters that put the idea into my head, and also everyone who's said nice things about the first one.
> 
> Translation into Русский available: [Без вины](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25648792) by Переводчик_сдох (Lena013)

When Luffy appears over the wall of Captain Morgan's compound, Zoro's pretty sure he's hallucinating - this bizarre vision of a crazy young man in a straw hat the result of days of no food. That impression isn't helped by Luffy's frankly insane declarations and also, his apparent immunity to bullets. The whole thing's a bit of a fever dream, and for a long time afterwards malnutrition is Zoro's excuse for why his clearest memory of that day is Luffy's blinding smile when Zoro agrees to join the crew.

‘Crew’ turns out to be just him and Luffy, but surprisingly, Zoro doesn’t mind. It’s a surprise to Zoro, at least – Luffy accepts Zoro's presence with remarkable ease, Zoro’s name becoming a familiar sound in Luffy’s voice – but Zoro, at least, expects there to be some kind of transition. He’s rather made a name for himself as a lone wanderer, and now he has someone to give him orders, a constant travel companion. Zoro spends much of the first few days of their acquaintance trying to figure out why he _doesn’t_ feel weird, days of reticence which Luffy seems content to fill with inadvisable excursions, delighted chatter, and a casual invasion of Zoro's personal space which Zoro should probably object to more than he does.

Zoro owes Luffy his life, but even still, it's shockingly easy to fall into step behind this young man, who ought to seem a fool but instead manages to become, in a space of a few short days, the most real thing in Zoro's life. There's that whole thing with Buggy – speaking of inadvisable excursions – and Mihawk, and everything after that, and things just sort of continue to spiral.

It comes on almost without Zoro realising it, so caught up is he in the fighting, and the almost dying, and the saving of villages. It comes on as a surprise, and it grows so quickly. Luffy is unlike anyone Zoro has ever met before, at once simple and inscrutable. Zoro feels like he understands Luffy’s motivations, that they align perfectly with his own, that they _click_. Yet there’s this untouchable element to his new captain, a wildness in the way that Luffy gives so freely of himself, to help Usopp, and Sanji, and Nami, and the people they care about.

When Luffy does this, Zoro finds himself breathless. Luffy throws his whole soul out there, trusting his brand-new crewmates to have his back while he puts his own life on the line for their beliefs and principles. This is the core of Luffy’s captaincy, and it results in a complete appropriation of Zoro’s absolute loyalty. Perhaps such was always Zoro's natural tendency, awaiting only the appearance of the right king to serve and honour, and now it has manifested it will not be diminished.

And then there’s Zoro’s growing distraction when Luffy moves and fights, which Zoro does his best to ignore, because it's not only down to Luffy’s aptitude for ad-hoc battle strategy (that Zoro is actually deeply impressed by), and it’s not because of the novelty of seeing a devil fruit in action; it’s something more physical, something unfamiliar.

So things spiral – Luffy's goals and determination, Zoro’s blades and his blood, looped in with the new and secret thrill of watching Luffy fight and _move_ , swirling Zoro around in a disorienting mess, and spitting him out confused and changed.

It's driven home right after they get Merry back. They have an actual crew now, and a real ship, Luffy’s first. Luffy rockets around the boat in delight, and ends up, inevitably, on the figurehead. It's made perfectly for him, his throne to sit on as he surveys the wild ocean kingdom that Zoro is now absolutely certain, after far too few weeks to know something like this, that Luffy will come to rule. Luffy turns, to see Zoro caught up in the sight of him, and grins. The sun haloes him perfectly, bright noon-day glare, and Zoro is temporarily blinded. When his vision clears, Luffy is still smiling, sharing the joy of his first ship with his first crewmate, and it feels like liquid sunlight's been injected into Zoro's veins, lighting his blood on fire and burning it up, burning him dry.

* * *

Zoro had been telling himself it was Luffy's natural magnetism. The man certainly has gravity – pulling crew members to him rapidly and dramatically, so that Zoro's startlingly rapid conversion from pirate hunter to loyal pirate first mate is fortunately eclipsed, swept under the rug, where no one can question it too closely.

But natural magnetism doesn't explain it, or excuse it. How he has sworn himself to Luffy’s dream, stitching their shared goals and future lives close and intertwined. Certainly doesn’t explain the warmth that spreads across Zoro's shoulder when Luffy claps him on the back, or how Luffy’s eyes pin Zoro in place, the swordsman attentive and still and expectant, until Luffy releases Zoro again to himself by looking away.

Zoro is actually aware, almost painfully so, that this, this... _adoration_ , is unusual. No one else seems so badly afflicted. Usopp had some hero worship going on, which rapidly eroded as he got to know Luffy better, morphing into respect, a close friendship, and goofy affection. Sanji and Nami are little harder to read, apparently having attended the same school of repressed emotion as Zoro. They seem to respect Luffy and be exasperated by him in equal turns, but maybe they're hiding something. Luffy had saved their homes and loved ones, so they owe Luffy as much if not more than Zoro. Maybe Zoro's conflicted emotions are to be expected in the face of such a debt, and this is just some aspect of normal human society that bypassed Zoro while he was wandering the ocean.

And look, Zoro isn’t typically in the habit of lying to himself, but this is more of an act of self-preservation.

So one night after dinner, when everyone except Zoro and Sanji have cleared out of the galley, Zoro tries to formulate a not-weird way to broach the topic while he's occupied with mandatory dish duty. He prefers Sanji to Nami on this, because Nami’s still getting used to the crew, and she’s got some trust issues to work out, and also she scares Zoro, just a little.

Sanji is smoking, leaning against the counter and gazing off into the distance.

"Does he have that effect on you, too?" Zoro asks abruptly, and immediately wants to punch himself in the mouth.

Sanji gives him a sidelong glance and takes his cigarette out of his mouth.

"What effect?" he asks. He doesn’t ask _who_ , which says something telling about how Sanji, brand-new-crewmate-and-budding-nemesis-Sanji, is already aware of Zoro's normal thought patterns.

"Fuckin' – nothing, forget it," Zoro says, wavering. "Just-"

Sanji raises his eyebrows but seems willing to temporarily refrain from any mocking.

"He draws people to him," Zoro settles on, attempting to salvage some dignity.

"Sure," Sanji says, unhelpfully. "Probably not as bad as you, though.”

Zoro whips his head around to stare at Sanji, tensed for a fight, half-scrubbed pot gripped in his hands. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he demands.

Sanji looks back at him wide-eyed, surprised, like he genuinely didn’t mean to rile Zoro up, so some of the defensiveness drains out of Zoro’s posture.

They stare at each other for a beat. Then Sanji waves the hand holding his cigarette in an affected nonchalant manner.

“Nothing,” he says. “Just, I thought that you two...”, he trails off at the expression on Zoro’s face. “Nothing, never mind,” Sanji finishes quickly.

Zoro, discomfited, turns back to the dishes. Sanji's resumes smoking and a tense silence falls.

Then Luffy smashes into the room with his usual flair, the noise of the door slamming open causing Zoro to fumble and almost break a soapy glass. Luffy says something to them, not that Zoro hears it, because he lifts his eyes to look at Luffy and Luffy's smiling, he's the fucking _sun_ , and the brilliance of him scorches Zoro skin dry, slams through him and takes everything with it. Parched, Zoro can't unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth to answer Luffy, but his captain doesn't seem to care, just claps him on the shoulder and bounds off.

Sanji huffs and rolls his eyes, and saunters out onto the deck. Zoro, on the other hand, takes a good thirty seconds to unfreeze and resume mechanically washing dishes.

That, he supposes, tells him all he really needs to know.

* * *

Nothing changes. The sun continues to burn, and the feelings don’t abate, or resolve themselves, or normalise. It's not like Zoro doesn't have plenty to occupy himself – they gain several crew members, start a fuckton of chaos, and Zoro's collection of near-death experiences grows, but through it all Luffy's front and centre, laughing away all of Zoro's peace and self-possession.

The touching makes it steadily worse. Luffy's a tactile person; this is not news. He gets people's attention with a hand on their arm or shoulder, and – when he can get away with it – full body contact. Other crew members accept the platonic handsiness with varying degrees of tolerance, ranging from Sanji, who threatens bodily harm at the prospect of a hug, to Zoro, who makes almost no objection.

This turns out to be his undoing, because if the sight of Luffy scorches Zoro, his touches dehydrate.

For example, some time after the whole mess with Arlong, when Zoro still thinks that maybe if he trains hard enough he can exorcise this obsession, he joins the rest of their growing crew for lunch. He sits next to Luffy, because there's no space anywhere else and no good reason not to, and Luffy ignores him in favour of devouring everything in sight.

Usopp arrives late, and Zoro shifts over to give him room, leaving very little space between Luffy and Zoro. Zoro feels the points of contact with hyperawareness – an elbow, a thigh, a knee – bristling with heat even through the barrier of their clothing. Trying to ignore it, Zoro reaches past Luffy to help himself to green beans, and Luffy’s fingers brush his wrist, purely by accident, because they’re sitting half on top of each other.

The entirety of Zoro’s attention focuses down to that simple, meaningless contact, each touch point of Luffy’s fingers leaving hot patches on Zoro’s skin, and evaporating all of Zoro with it.

Zoro drinks ten glasses of water with that meal, but it doesn’t help.

After lunch he flees and hides like a coward, hunkers down out of sight in the tiny cabin that functions as the ship's cold storage and cracks into their alcohol stash, downing two beers, three.

This is a problem. Zoro could have gotten away with a weird sort of devotion – God knows Luffy has had a starstruck effect on everyone from random bystanders to a not insignificant number of enemy pirates, and even marines. Zoro's fairly sure, however, that he's got the market cornered on Thoughts First Mates Should Not Have About Their Captains.

The sixth beer gives Zoro enough fortitude to try to admit to himself exactly what the thoughts might mean. Thoughts like _clever fingers_ when Luffy helps Usopp re-knot some rigging, and _holy shit he's flexible_ when Luffy's devil fruit ability shows itself accidentally, or _he could definitely beat the shit out of me_ when Luffy comes out of a fight triumphant, which is objectively probably a weird thing to find attractive.

That’s new: an attraction. Zoro hadn't given much through to it before, to the sorts of things he might find… appealing, because there were more important things to think about. And there still is, but this _urge_ seems somehow to intrude anyway.

What doesn't help is – and _listen_ , Zoro's _not proud of this_ – is the way Luffy moves. There's a wiriness, a suppleness, in his most casual movement, stretched taught over a hidden strength, that affects Zoro in deep ways. That has Zoro, sober, forcing himself to turn both his face and his thoughts away.

Zoro, drunk, switches to forty percent proof sake to maybe blot out the feelings that are starting to mix together in increasingly muddled thoughts about captaincies, warm fingers that leave brand marks on his hips, and falling to his knees for something that has nothing to do with supplication. Something to do with the dry mouth he gets when Luffy comes at him with the one-two punch of a hip check and a grin, and how the alcohol doesn't seem to be slaking his thirst at all.

Half the bottle disappears with the increasingly intense desire to return Luffy's platonic touches, coloured by a trickling urge to see if maybe Zoro can appease the dryness by licking at the sweat of Luffy's skin in hidden places, tasting his hardness, drinking him down.

The remainder of the bottle goes towards an attempt to drown those thoughts, eventually guiding Zoro into a chaotic sleep with images of fighting mixed with soft beds, and Luffy turning his burning battle eyes on paper-dry Zoro.

Zoro wakes up panting, cramped and all twisted up, and painfully hard.

* * *

The next morning Zoro washes the taste of bile out of his mouth in the shower, and gathers himself back together. Now that he’s faced the beast of truth, he must seek to overcome it.

This intensity, it makes him want to follow Luffy to the ends of the earth, but it also makes him overheat. That's not as it should be. Luffy’s faith in Zoro has grown since they first met, and he trusts Zoro absolutely, to have his back, to look after the crew. Zoro feels the weight of this trust, and it anchors and orients him, giving his arms strength and keeping his blades sharp. He is honoured by it, and shares Luffy’s pride in his crew, and Zoro himself is _so proud_ of his own captain.

So Luffy trusts Zoro, as a first mate. And Luffy's also naturally tactile. Zoro has figured out that Luffy’s touches are reassurances, a way for Luffy to make physical and emotional connections with his crew members and friends. They all accept variations on hugs, and tackles, and roughhousing, anything from manly claps on the back to being co-opted into gleeful dancing.

It is the combination of these things – of trust and of touches – that has Zoro crackling with guilt. Luffy’s attention doesn’t mean what Zoro might want it to mean – it _cannot_ , Luffy _must not_ feel the same heat, otherwise surely Zoro would see it, like he sees Luffy’s joy and anger, like he knows Luffy’s true meaning, always.

Zoro wonders then if it’s the guilt or the desire that’s drying him up.

Zoro’s training provides many tools for self-control and self-denial. He spends extra hours that morning meditating, trying to let Luffy’s presence flow past him, though he might as well try to will away sunburn. He visualises freezing winds and tracts of ice that never melt, hoping that this might douse his overheated soul.

It’s not entirely successful – after all, snow can burn and ice can form a desert, waterless and parched. Even if he cannot master the worst of it, he tells himself that meditation will at least help with the illusion of being outwardly calm, as the fire of Luffy's trust sears itself through his lungs, heart, and gut.

But when Luffy sunshine grins in his direction at lunch, acid rises again in Zoro’s oesophagus, and it burns as he swallows it back down.

* * *

What actually happens, is not that Zoro becomes the implacable earth to Luffy’s unrelenting sun, but that the touching stops.

And that is somehow so much worse.

It has to be because Luffy's noticed, surely. Noticed the way that Zoro absorbs any contact with Luffy like dry sand swallows the morning dew, craving Luffy's attention like that will make his skin full and soft, erase the sun damage and the callouses. Noticed how Zoro cannot stop himself from seeking Luffy out, even though every day it dries him up a little more. He’s like the man dying of thirst that plunges himself into the sea, knowing that the salt water will only make things worse.

But Luffy’s touches slowly cease regardless, though he doesn’t avoid Zoro, or give any other indication that something may be wrong. He calls Zoro’s name instead of getting his attention by a tap on the shoulder or arm, and on boring sunny days drapes himself over Chopper and Usopp, instead of bothering Zoro.

It’s horrid. Zoro’s skin feels like it will crack and split open, and his whole body is rusted up and stiff. Baths and showers don’t work – Zoro feels like he can never get deep enough into the water – so he turns to the sea. The sea hates Luffy but she lets Zoro pull his captain out each time he falls in, so maybe she has a soft spot for Zoro. Maybe the sea sees that the way Luffy looks at her is the way Zoro looks at Luffy, when he forgets he's not supposed to love forces of nature that burn far too hot for sixty-percent-water, mortal-man Zoro.

So maybe the sea has sympathy. It is, at least, a place where Luffy can't go, so Zoro goes swimming whenever it's fairly calm and he can easily keep pace with the ship.

The water is sometimes sun-warmed, but there’s always an undercurrent of iciness. The way the liquid flows around him and leeches out his body heat is a welcome contrast, and when he ducks his head underwater, it clogs up his ears and nose, and blurs his vision, and for a time it's the only thing he feels.

He wonders if this is what it would be like, to have Luffy’s bare skin against his, the contrast of them, to move in time with each other and crest that wave of intensity together.

As penance, Zoro dives deep, reaching towards the blackness below him, but the pressure is hard to fight and it pushes him back up, his lungs starting to demand air. A metre before he breaks the surface, Zoro opens his mouth, lets the remainder of his air escape, and accepts the water that rushes in. He doesn’t swallow; just lets it fill him, suspended for a moment between the magnificence of the sea and the sun, and the man to whom he’s sworn himself. Wonders if this is what it feels like to drown, this last moment of peace sandwiched between panic and surrendering to death.

Zoro doesn’t drown, and the seawater doesn’t touch the thirst or the dryness. But at least during these moments he can pretend that Luffy's not there because he can't be, and that Zoro, hauling himself back on board and dripping with salt water, can't be touched for the same reason.

* * *

Then, without warning, those small, casual touches are back. It’s like Luffy had forgotten he used to be so familiar with Zoro’s personal space, and had suddenly remembered. Things start to return to the previous status quo, and Zoro relaxes slightly because maybe he’s gotten away with it, successfully buried his yearning where it can’t make Luffy look at him with sympathy and distance.

Except the renewed closeness doesn’t come with a corresponding relief. Luffy hugging him, after months of not doing things like that, isn’t like rain after a drought, but like a sandstorm through a desert. And Zoro has finally understood why.

Look, he knows he’s not the best at this sort of thing, but this is hardly his fault. The cause and the cure co-exist; anyone would get confused.

It isn't Luffy that's causing Zoro to ache with thirst, it's Zoro's adoration of him. Zoro's done this to himself, and while Luffy's touch both eases the symptoms and makes them worse in turn, until Zoro can drown himself in Luffy’s arms and mouth and body there will be no slaking this.

Zoro isn't blind. Luffy started off tactile, but once they got more crew members it became obvious that Luffy doesn't crawl into Usopp's bunk like he does some nights with Zoro, and that he doesn't drape himself over Sanji's back when he's cooking, like he does sometimes when Zoro's training. Maybe Zoro does get more touches, and different touches, than the rest of the crew. The problem is that the difference might well be that it's not Zoro per se, but that Zoro doesn't kick Luffy out or shrug him off. That when Luffy seeks out warmth at night, Zoro shifts aside and turns to him, like a sunflower seedling seeking the sun. This had been less of a problem earlier on, when Zoro could blame it on the tiny boat, but later it was harder to justify, and too late as well, and now Zoro's golden sunflower face was both scorched in the heat of Luffy's attention and powerless to turn away from it.

Luffy’s even told Zoro that he loves him, but he’s said variations of the same to the rest of the crew. And he means it – he loves them all deeply, as friends and battle-brothers and battle-sisters, and as a captain. What Zoro cannot see, and cannot know or assume – not for this, not for something this enormous and all-encompassing – is the sort of love that would see Luffy soothing Zoro’s cracked lips with soft or bruising kisses, tasting blood off each other’s skin after battles, and keeping Zoro at Luffy’s right hand and in his bed, wherever the winds took them.

Zoro’s not sure if Luffy’s the sort, for that kind of thing – not like Zoro, who was swearing himself to Luffy's dream, almost dying for Luffy's crew, mere days after they met.

Not like Zoro, who is slowly starting to understand that this want is of the forever kind.

* * *

The afternoon sun hits Luffy’s hair like it’s trying to give him a halo, as he sits there on the deck and stares out to sea.

Zoro admires the figure his captain cuts, the body that switches between bending itself into ridiculous shapes to cheer up a child, and bearing untold pain to save a friend, showing always a depth of compassion that has earned Zoro’s immediate and lasting respect. Luffy’s simple presence somehow manages to represent everything, both the warm force that pushes Zoro ever forward and the fierce heat of loyalty that ties Zoro to Luffy’s heel, to protect his back and stand beside him.

Zoro marvels at all of this. How can it be that grass doesn't crackle and flame up under Luffy's feet, when the merest brush of his fingers, the touch of his gaze, leaves Zoro withering?

Then Zoro notices Luffy’s expression, which is pensive and oddly serious. So Zoro moves up to sit beside him, in case Luffy wants to talk, or maybe just to offer the reassurance of Zoro’s steady presence. Zoro’s not going anywhere – he thinks sometimes Luffy draws comfort from that.

Zoro’s cautious “What’s up?” as he sits next to Luffy is met with an irritable twitch.

“I’m hungry,” Luffy says.

Zoro raises an eyebrow, because Luffy’s expression and body language don't match the despondent whining that usually accompanies those words, but Zoro can play along, until Luffy gets at what he really means.

“I’m sure Sanji can whip something up,” Zoro says.

The words seem to frustrate Luffy, and he fidgets back and forth, towards Zoro and away from him, before he seems to decide something and swings around from his seated position to kneel in front of Zoro.

Then Luffy leans in close – too close for Zoro's fragile self-control – and he repeats it, "I’m _hungry_ ", like he’s trying to tell Zoro something more.

Zoro's projecting, he must be, why else would he see the grasping desire in Luffy's eyes that he feels in himself. Zoro knows he shouldn’t, but the ocean's waves are poised to crash above him – probably because Luffy's got his hands braced on Zoro's thighs – and the sun is scorching his salt-coated skin. That’s his excuse, anyway, a parched throat and nothing to drink for months, for why he loses his reason and leans in to kiss Luffy.

It’s quick, and Zoro's certain he’s misread things, but then the stunned look snaps off of Luffy’s face and is replaced by something intense and ravenous. And then he has an armful of captain, Luffy kissing back with focus, and the waves crash over Zoro and push him down, and he goes, hardly caring, as sweet water fills him up.

Each touch of their lips soothes Zoro's sunburnt soul, and Luffy's hands on his face clears the grit from his eyes, and then:

"I love you", Luffy says, and brings the rains and the floods with him.

Later, after Zoro has let himself love and be loved by a force of nature, has drowned and been revived, he whispers the burning truth of his own adoration into Luffy’s skin, and Luffy’s responding delight is soft, and fond, and full.


End file.
